Where the stars are strange
by helga3
Summary: In which there's blushing. A lot of blushing. Kaidoh/Sakuno. No, really.


**Disclaimer: **I own nothing.**  
**

**A/N:** Set in the same future as _There Without a Map_. Fuji has transferred to Rikkai for high school, and a bunch of Fudoumine-people to Seigaku, while Tezuka escaped the madness to Europe. That's not very important to this, though, just a sidenote.

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**Where the stars are strange**

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**I.**

After he finally manages to ask her out, Kaidoh feels so elated for the rest of the day that he practically floats through it. Classes suddenly seem much less boring, and playing tennis is easier than ever before.

Strangely enough, no one else notices.

It isn't until the next day that Kaidoh realises asking her out was only the first step. He worried so much about simply asking her that he never stopped to consider what to do after that's done. Kaidoh is in his second year of high school, and has never been on a real date before. So naturally, he worries. What do girls like to do on dates anyway? He wouldn't want to do anything wrong or something she won't like - somehow, the thought that Ryuzaki-san won't enjoy herself on the date makes him feel somewhat like he imagines it would feel if he was the one to lose the decisive match for the team at Nationals, or something.

The best thing to do in this case, he figures, is to simply ask her what she would like to do once they're on their date. But somehow he'd feel better if he'd have some kind of suggestion, at least.

Kaidoh, on the whole, does not like asking for help. But as the date draws closer and he still hasn't decided what to do, he decides that if there's ever a time to swallow his pride and ask, it's now. Which, of course, leads to another problem, namely who to talk to in the first place. Inui-sempai is probably the closest thing Kaidoh has to a best friend, and he's always been able to give very good advice when it comes to subjects like training and tennis. However, the thought of asking Inui-sempai for advice about girls and dating for some reason makes Kaidoh's brain hurt. He considers the rest of the team as well, but decides that either he's not really close enough to anyone else among them to feel comfortable asking them, or they wouldn't have anything constructive to say anyway.

So finally, he decides that the best course of action might be talking to one of Ryuzaki-san's friends instead. He knows that her best friend is that loud girl who's the leader of Echizen's fan club, but for some reason the thought of talking to her doesn't appeal to Kaidoh at all. The thought of Echizen's fan club does remind him that Echizen is, in fact, some kind of friend of Ryuzaki-san's, though, and he figures it could be worth a shot.

So he corners Echizen one day after practise, and somehow manages to ask him if he has any idea what Ryuzaki-san might like to do on a date. Echizen stares at Kaidoh for a while, face unreadable, and then says: "Maybe you could go play tennis."

For some reason, Kaidoh has a feeling that not all girls find tennis all that interesting, especially not on dates.

"So you finally asked out Ryuzaki-san," Inui-sempai says, when Kaidoh finally decides to not only swallow his pride for a second time, but also ignore the hurt to his brain that it causes him, and ask him. Kaidoh is a little startled that Inui-sempai _knows, _because he didn't actually mention any names. He just asked about dates. In general.

"I have prepared a list for you," Inui-sempai continues.

Kaidoh walks away with a list of common dating activities; everything from movies to amusement parks to eating out (Inui has even included a list of popular restaurants, complete with a comparison of prices), but Kaidoh is still a bit worried. Nothing on Inui-sempai's list is anything he hasn't already considered. He'd like the date to be _special. B_ut he does keep the list, and figures that if he can't think of anything else, he'll just have to settle for using something from it after all.

When the morning of the day of the date comes around, he still hasn't decided on anything, and is pretty much resigned to doing so - getting something to eat, or seeing a movie, maybe. It's not very special, but it is pretty traditional after all.

However, once morning practise is over and they're all heading back to their classes, Kaidoh impulsively does something so unexpected that it startles even him. It's a last desperate act, something that proves to the world at large what lengths he's prepared to go for this.

After Momoshiro finishes laughing, he tells Kaidoh basically the same things Inui-sempai's list did. All, of course, while looking so amused that Kaidoh has the urge to take out his tennis racquet and smack him with it. He somehow manages to resist the temptation, though and instead he tells Momoshiro that he's thought of all of that, and that wasn't what he had in mind.

He heads for class, mourning for the last shreds of his dignity, and wondering what the hell he was thinking.

"Don't worry, Viper!" Momoshiro yells after him. "I'll definitely think of some way to save you!"

Kaidoh decides he wasn't thinking at all.

At lunch, Momoshiro comes barging into his classroom and drags away Kaidoh. "Momo-chan to the rescue!" he says cheerfully, and Kaidoh decides he very much prefers the usual, hostile Momoshiro to this new, helpful version of his rival. "I heard some of the girls in my class talking about a date one of them had been on, to the zoo. That's where you should take her! To see your reptile relatives and stuff."

"The... zoo?" Kaidoh says, ignoring Momoshiro's comments for once.

"Yep! Girls like that kind of things. Maybe she'll think you have a secret sensitive side or something." Momoshiro looks amused at the thought.

"Oh..." Kaidoh says.

"I even asked the girls more about the place!" Momoshiro says. "But I didn't mention _you_ of course. If I did, they probably wouldn't have told me anything. They'd probably think you'd scare the animals or something." Momoshiro snickers, and turns his attention to his food.

Kaidoh is too distracted to argue.

He meets Ryuzaki-san that evening. He asks her what she would like to do.

"It doesn't matter. What would Kaidoh-kun like to do?" she says, blushing a little.

Kaidoh hesitates a little, and then asks: "Ryuzaki-san... Do you like animals?"

**II.**

In junior high, Sakuno was in the tennis club for a couple of years before she decided it wasn't her sport after all. After spending some time in a couple of other clubs after that, she finally ended up in the photography club. She's been told she has a pretty good eye for photography. Shiba-san squeals happily when Sakuno shows up with a camera at some of the team's tennis games and says she's a journalist in the making (Sakuno doesn't agree - she likes taking pictures, but she doesn't think she'd be very good at asking people questions), and laughs about how she'll have to watch out for the competition now when she sees Sakuno's pictures. At one game, she ran into Fuji-sempai, who apparently enjoys taking pictures as well, while she was wandering around with the camera. He looked at some of her pictures and seemed encouraging about it. (She can't remember exactly what he said, though. She was a bit distracted since he was accompanied by the tall half-Brazilian Rikkai player at the time, and she finds him a bit intimidating.)

She hasn't played much tennis since, except for fun a couple of times with Tomo-chan. One day, though, she goes with Kaidoh-sempai to one of the street courts. It's strange watching him play with her. She's seen him play many times before, but never like this. The intensity he usually plays with isn't there, and he looks like he's trying hard to play at her level.

Sakuno thinks maybe she should feel grateful for that; they're just playing for fun after all, and in a way she does. But still, she feels strangely sad when they leave the courts. Playing tennis like Kaidoh-sempai does when he's not holding back is still like being in a world she'll never be part of.

A few days later, when they're studying together in the library, Kaidoh-sempai looks up from his work and asks, a bit hesitantly, if she would mind showing him some pictures she's taken sometimes.

It's silly to feel sad about tennis, she decides as she says, _sure_.

**III.**

She hasn't been to any of the tennis team's victory celebrations in a long time, Sakuno realises as she steps into Kawamura sushi. The regulars are all there already, and some of the non-regulars as well.

"Isn't this great?" Tomo-chan asks beside her. "It's been such a long time since we've been here! It's just like junior high, isn't it?"

Sakuno watches Tomo-chan bounce over to the table where Ryouma-kun, Ibu-sempai and Kamio-sempai are seated. If they had still been in junior high, she would probably have been too embarrassed to follow Tomo-chan, no matter how much she would have wanted to celebrate with Ryouma-kun, Sakuno thinks.

Tomo-chan is already excitedly explaining something to Kamio-sempai, and Sakuno watches them for a while before going up to the counter and sitting down next to Kaidoh-sempai. He's got a sushi plate in front of him, which he pushes towards her as she sits down. Kawamura-sempai is apparently the only one working here tonight, and looks busy talking to Kikumaru-sempai and Momoshiro-sempai at one of the tables, so she gratefully takes some sushi off the plate.

"I think Tomo-chan is wrong," she says thoughtfully after she's swallowed the last bite.

"What?" Kaidoh-sempai looks confused.

"I don't think this is really that much like junior high at all," she says decisively.

**IV.**

They go to an amusement park one day, and end up stopping outside a Haunted House.

"I don't like those," she says, looking embarrassed. "I always get so scared."

"We won't go if you don't like it," Kaidoh says, feeling almost embarrassingly relieved.

"No," she says, blushing and looking down at her feet. "I think we should go... Because... If I'm with Kaidoh-sempai, I'm sure it will be all right."

"Oh," is all he can say.

Kaidoh hates the Haunted House. His heart is beating so fast and so loud the whole time that he's sure Ryuzaki-san can hear it as well. He has the sneaking suspicion that if she wasn't with him, he would either have screamed and ran away, simply frozen up on the spot and been completely unable to move, or possibly fainted a long time ago. Or possibly all of the above. As it is, though, he has to keep his eyes open, and keep reminding himself to breath, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and maybe they will somehow make it out alive.

Miraculously, they somehow do.

Ryuzaki-san lets go of his arm - she's been holding on to him the whole time. "I knew it would be okay if I was with you," she says as he looks down on her. She blushes a little, but she's smiling and doesn't look away.

Kaidoh thinks he'd probably be stupid enough to do it again if she asked him to.

**V.**

Sakuno's meeting with the photography club ran late that day, so she doesn't expect anyone else to be about anymore. But as she leaves, she notices Kaidoh-sempai leaning against the fence just outside the school gate. She stops, and they look at each other for a while.

"Are you going home?" he finally asks her. He looks like he wants to say more, and she thinks she knows what.

"Yes," she says, and waits for him to fall into step next to her.

They walk home together.


End file.
